Big men firing big guns at bigger enemies. Let's not pretend that the FPS genre's appeal has much more than this simple trio at its core.
Sometimes, that's all we need - a little bit of trigger therapy on a stage that's rigged to go up in a monstrous mushroom cloud. We like 'big'. We like 'bang'. And we love 'kaboom'.
The original Resistance rode the coat-tails of all three, but occasionally did so unconvincingly. Smashing in as the PS3's first FPS, it was the huge set pieces that first caught the eye, with the odd monolithic extra-terrestrial meat-head making Insomniac's blockbuster ambitions clear.
With Resistance 2, Insomniac worked out how to open the colour palette in Paintshop and turned the Big-O-Matic up to 'Really Big'. All plus points, but with more average FPS gameplay (aside from impressive multiplayer offerings), the all important FPS core was still a little bit washed-out.
Resistance 3, then, arrives to a nervous toot on the kazoo rather than a fanfare of hype. Killzone 3 has already done a nice little bit of business for Team PS3 as far as the FPS 2011 battleground is concerned, and with the likes of Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 just around the corner, Resistance 3 is by no means the most anticipated shooter of its release window.
The best way to approach Resistance 3 is with the rest of its franchise out of mind, to an extent. [RESISTANCE 2 SPOILER COMING!!] Since old-school action hero Nathan Hale got shot in the noggin at the end of Resistance 2, change is afoot in man's last stand against the Chimera - and, thankfully, that extends beyond the game's roster.
Joseph Capelli - the man who popped a cap in Hale - takes on protagonist duties but things are looking bleak. It's four years since Resistance 2 and Earth is now more or less Chimera Town, with only a few dregs of the human race left hiding in dark pockets.
Capelli's on-trend with his family in Oklahoma until good ol' Dr. Malikov pops his head around the door. He's been tinkering with Hale's corpse (it's all above board) and it turns out that his blood cells held the key to reversing the Chimera disease. "And I'll do you one better," says Malikov in not so many words, "I've only gone and created a bloody cure!"
The eerie silhouettes of creeping trees in a twilight blue forest is distinct from the heavy fog you'll peer through as you battle through a flooded village. Even the cubby-holes human of human survivors have avoided the cookie-cutter treatment. While, some have set up camp in an admittedly clichéd urban wasteland, another sanctuary is set up in a crowded school, which has a completely different feel and almost a real sense of life.
As you stumble across your fellow man at various intervals, you get the impression that a real world is going on (or caving in) around you. The effect of this living, breathing environment has started to creep into the FPS genre, with games like Metro 2033, and it's something that gamers are only going to demand more and more.
Comments
35 comments so far...
MattyR95 on 6 Sep '11 said:
Sounds like the campaign is very good and varied.
clayf1ghter on 6 Sep '11 said:
Nice might have to pick this up at the weekend.
Hows the multiplayer CVG?
slick loose on 6 Sep '11 said:
WHAT ABOUT THE CO-OP!!!? Does it have campaign mode split screen co-op like the first game!? Is it any good!?
I NEED TO KNOW!!!
appyday on 6 Sep '11 said:
Resistance 3, then, arrives to a nervous toot on the kazoo rather than a fanfare of hype.
Love it! My kazoo is ready for friday....
El Mag on 6 Sep '11 said:
http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/resistanc ... co-op.html
And now you do.
clayf1ghter on 6 Sep '11 said:
@slick check out the gametrailers review they touch on the co-op
jimbob25 on 6 Sep '11 said:
Google is your friend!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_3#Multiplayer
Great news! Sorely lacking from the 2nd game.
slick loose on 6 Sep '11 said:
El Mag thanks...although I would prefer more of a review of how well it works!
So B for effort!
clayf1ghter...that review was ace and was exactly what i was looking for...but you didn't provide a link, so a B for you too!
I'll provide the link for the lazy
El Mag on 6 Sep '11 said:
Well I imagine it'll work the same way as Dead Nation did for you slick.....your wife saving you repeatedly.
You buying this then? sounded like you wanted Dead Island until you found out it had no split screen.
slick loose on 6 Sep '11 said:
Haha, Touché! Sorry I spelt Douche wrong
Yeah the Wife is fed up with watching me play Dead Space 2, so much so that she just watches TV instead...meaning I can't play DS2
So really needed a co-op game and i thought Dead Island maybe the answer...but alas no. 
Fun fact, my Wife went in labour while we were playing co-op in Resistance: Fall of Man, in fact I still have that specific save on my PS3 when she decided the pain was too much and maybe time to phone an ambulance
Also hoping Uncharted 3 has a great split screen co-op. Also wouldn't mind some dlc for Dead Nation...
clayf1ghter on 6 Sep '11 said:
Harsh if it was exactly what you were looking for then surely an A- at least!!
buffig on 6 Sep '11 said:
Cant wait. Definitely picking this up on friday.
CrispyLog on 6 Sep '11 said:
Would be better if it was on the 360 as it has an extra megahertzbyte of AntiAliasing speed-RAM to improve the lighting.
asiapacific on 6 Sep '11 said:
I guess the weapons mentality is this -" Sing alike a butterfly and sting like a .... Creep"?
KK-Headcharge78 on 6 Sep '11 said:
It looks like the kinda game I wish I still had a PS3 for, bummer
, oh well I guess I still have Gears to come.
djreplay on 6 Sep '11 said:
Roll on friday, it's been a few months since I last shot an alien in the face.
Welsh Jester on 6 Sep '11 said:
No idea how this series is so popular, when i first bought a PS3 and resistance i thought it was an ok game.. nothing ground breaking. yet almost every review slates DNF and i see it as very little differences in comparison except for A.I.
Console shooters are so overrated, pretty much like halo.
thankfully i don't have a ps3 anymore as it was collecting dust, pc gaming ftw.
clayf1ghter on 6 Sep '11 said:
Blah blah blah why even bother?
Fr33Kye on 6 Sep '11 said:
WOOH! Go Insomniac! Cannot wait to play this. Campaign sounds great and satisfying and i loved the multiplayer beta. Probably the best fps i'll see this year. Killzone 3 is the best fps visually, but i didn't care for the multiplayer. Rage can go f**k itself at this point. Battlfield isn't really my thing but i might play if friends are into it. So resistance might be my fps of the year.
TheBusterMan on 6 Sep '11 said:
Sounds good.I hear the Move implementation feels a bit tacked on.Hopefully there'll be a patch for that.
STEVONYMO on 6 Sep '11 said:
Yeh but I would have to get my fat arse up off the chair to keep changing the multiple discs that it would no doubt take up!
kirankara on 6 Sep '11 said:
So FPS on pc's is vastly different is it? As most the pc games out there are just higher res versions of console games anyway.
d**k Head!!!
kirankara on 6 Sep '11 said:
Im hoping this post is deliberately ridiculous, and totally tongue in cheek??
if it's not , clearly the Conservative government need to do something about helping the mentally disabled in the community more
KesMonkey on 6 Sep '11 said:
There's no such thing as overrated. Ratings are based on people's opinions, and therefore, subjective, and therefore, cannot be wrong. If you had said "I prefer my pc to my PS3", and I had said, "No, you're wrong", I'd look like an idiot, wouldn't I?
What you meant to say was "I don't enjoy console shooters as much as millions of others do."
Any time anyone says "X is overrated", what they mean to say is "I don't enjoy X as much as others do".
Do us all a favour and keep your elitest snobbish attitude to yourself.
TheLastDodo on 6 Sep '11 said:
Without trying to start a flame war:
http://bf3blog.com/2011/08/battlefield- ... r-browser/
Consoles 1-0 PC
voodoo341 on 6 Sep '11 said:
Come on Friday! Enjoyed the beta.
chunkysatsuma on 6 Sep '11 said:
Looking forward to playing this, sounds really childish but I will rent first as the poor review in game informer worried me, I think the wide range in reviews for the same game on different sites is pushing me to more rentals.
gideonseer on 7 Sep '11 said:
Curiously, this is all Bodycount was about and it received generally poor reviews. It was just run and gun and I liked it, not an earth shattering title (actually it is, pardon the pun) but does what it says on the tin.
Resistance 1 was alright but never a next gen title considering it was a flagship game at PS3 launch. I will get Resistance 3 when it comes down in price, have to save for a new PS3 first though.
aawells07 on 7 Sep '11 said:
I bought this today and im kinda dissapointed that i spent $60. The gameplay is good but the graphics look like its from the previous generation and listen i know graphics arent everything but yet they kinda are for me in some ways i guess i was expecting more after seeing all the videos and pictures i thought it was gonna look amazing but after playing it for a few i was kinda turned off by it. I dunno after some of PS latest exclusives looking so good and then seeing this i was let down. Ima give it another go tomorrow and see if i can get into it and maybe overlook other stuff.
slick loose on 7 Sep '11 said:
So you're saying it looks like a PS2 game? Riiiiggggght...well everyone is entitled to their opinion.
aawells07 on 7 Sep '11 said:
Right you are. I swear it does in most areas its mainly the enviroments you get up close to pretty much everything and it just looks bad and i dont mean stand right next to it. I dunno if its the art direction or what
TheLastDodo on 7 Sep '11 said:
It is actually sub HD, in terms of resolution its lower than Resistance 2 was, they had to scale down on the resolution to include all sorts of new effects.
Pop on your reading glasses:
"Purely visual improvements to the Insomniac engine come across as a hybrid of Killzone 3 and Metro 2033. There's a wealth of intricate detailing in all aspects of the artwork and a lotof dynamic lights and shadow in play. Ambient occlusion is also well implemented, adding a further layer of depth to the environments, and there's a wealth of post-processing effects in play, including some beautiful light shafts/god-rays.
Resistance 3 doesn't skimp on alpha effects either. Fog, smoke and dust are all well utilised in adding to the realism of the scene, and come into their own during the pitched combat and the destruction-based set-pieces. Camera and object-based motion blur are also par for the course - something of a standard in all of Sony's key first-party titles.
Perhaps inevitably, there is a trade-off in the implementation of all these new effects. In the Battle: Los Angeles playable demo, we see that native resolution has dropped significantly, down from the 1280x704 of Resistance 2 to a mere 960x704 - a 25 per cent drop - and nothing from the much more recent preview code suggests that this has changed, suggesting it's a lock. This presents a number of issues to the image quality.
Firstly, there's an unavoidable blur added during the upscaling process. Similar to Killzone 2, there is a sense that blur is actually an intended component of the overall art style - after all, this is a dark, grungy, grim world that Insomniac is generating. However, the sub-HD resolution makes intricate sub-pixel detail stand out and look quite ugly in some cases, so anything along the lines of trees or chain fences suffers owing to the resolution drop."
Sammy_bham on 7 Sep '11 said:
anythings gotta be better then the 1st/2nd one! both sucked (in my opinion)
might be a rent (initially!)
TheBusterMan on 8 Sep '11 said:
I just started playing the co-op with my son on splitscreen and with 6 other players online on Resistance 2.I know it's different from the story,(which,let's be honest,wasn't great on R2)but It's good fun.Shame they haven't got that in Resistance 3.Co-op splitscreen should be good,though.I'm looking forward to Halo Anniversary for the co-op.
TallPaul1878 on 11 Sep '11 said:
I'm renting it and must say I'm enjoying it thoroughly. It's quite a spooky game for a shooter. The 3D is impressive but, as always, demands a lot of tinkering to get it just right. Also when you get to using the sniper rifle you may as well shut it off. Having a field of depth is all good but anything way into the distance seems to just vanish in 3D. I tend to just fire into the distance hoping to see the reticule go red. Other than that the 3D works well and seems to suffer the leastresolution loss I've seen so far.